Direct mail or e-mailing: what is the best solution ?

When a company wants to communicate, build loyalty or inform its customers or future customers, it can use two almost historical channels in marketing: postal mailing or e-mailinge-mailing. In both cases, it is about sending a message, preferably personalized, to a recipient. But these two techniques are very different and have advantages and disadvantages that must be taken into account when making your choice.

Personalization of the message and the recipient

Direct mail allows you to reach your target directly. The mail is in his name, the message is personalized, the customer has the feeling to be considered and even privileged. You can also design it as you wish (colors, choice of paper, shape, envelope…etc).

The postal mailing touches all the senses of your recipient: he can touch your mail, even smell it if you choose to perfume your mail. Many options of personalization are possible !

This is not necessarily the case of e-mailing which will only attract the eye of your target without touching his other senses. You can still incorporate images or videos into your email that will help to attract the reader’s attention, but overall it can be more complicated to make an impression with an email message that the recipient can’t actually touch.

The destination of the message

Provided that you have an updated database with the right addresses, the postal mailing arrives directly in the mailbox of your client. By going to recover his mail, he will inevitably fall on it.

On the other hand, an e-mail can go by the wayside or not even be read and go directly to the trash: look at your inbox and observe the number of e-mails you have received today, do you have the courage to open them all and read them ?

However, e-mailing also has the advantage of being discreet, since it can be opened at any time and read when the customer wants to. Moreover, it reaches your target whether it is at home or at the other end of the world.

The effectiveness of the chosen channel

We can think that the postal mailing is out of fashion with all the technological advances and new means of communication, but it is false. If the postal mailing is well designed, it can be particularly effective. And if it still exists today, it is because it continues to prove itself and to obtain a better return rate than e-mailing.

Concerning the e-mailing, its main advantage is that we can quickly know the impact it had thanks to the opening rates, the click rates and all the observable data in real time.

The cost of direct mail and e-mailing

In the case of direct mail, it is necessary to make a model, print and send the mail, which represents a certain cost that can certainly be quickly recuperated, but which does not exist in the case of e-mailing. The cost of the latter is unbeatable since it does not include the printing part and its shipping is free.

And ecology?

E-mailing is of course more ecological than postal mailing since it does not require the use of paper. However, the mail you send can be printed on recycled paper. Moreover, the environmental impact of digital technology is not negligible either.

Now that you have all this information, you can choose one or the other and why not both ! It’s up to you to see what best suits your company while respecting your brand image.